According to the head of the police force’s corruption unit, Comr. Roman Swaradhana, the investigation is based on findings by the Ombudsman of several fictitious villages receiving village funds in the regency.

“The police will investigate the case thoroughly,” Roman said, adding that his side had coordinated with the Ombudsman on the investigation of the case.

The village funds program, which has provided between Rp 800 million (US$56,200) and Rp 1 billion to more than 70,000 villages across the archipelago, is a flagship policy of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration.

Previously, the country was shocked by findings of nonexistent villages in Konawe regency, Southeast Sulawesi, that had been part of the government’s annual allocation.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and Southeast Sulawesi Police have teamed up to probe the alleged embezzlement of village funds in the regency.

“In this case, there are an alleged 34 problematic villages, comprising three fictitious villages [uninhabited villages] and 31 villages whose certificates of formation were backdated,” KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah said recently.

The case may have resulted in state and regional government losses from the village funds allocated to several villages in Konawe regency from 2016 until 2018, he added.

The report on fictitious villages on Nias Island came from the province’s Ombudsman.

It has recently announced to have found many “ghost villages” alleged to have been receiving hundreds of millions of rupiah in village funds annually.

“Hopefully the police investigate the case thoroughly and the mastermind behind it can be arrested soon,” North Sumatra Ombudsman office head Abyadi Siregar told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Abyadi said the number of discovered fictitious villages continued to increase. He said his office had initially only identified Kafokafo village in Sirombu district as a fictitious village. Yet, in just four days last week, his side received information from West Nias residents regarding a number of uninhabited villages receiving funds.

“There are many of them. This is surprising, because we have the data with us,” he said.

Aside from Kafokafo, Abyadi said, residents also reported that the villages of Bogi and Imana were uninhabited but were receiving more than Rp 750 million each annually.

In other cases, villages only had a small number of inhabitants, such as Sinene’eto which only had one family, Tuwatuwa with five families, Lahawa and Bawosalo’o with 10 families each and Hanefa with 13 families. Yet they had received between Rp 750 million and more than Rp 800 million in village funds annually since 2017.

“This is fishy,” Abyadi said, urging law enforcement authorities to thoroughly investigate the cases to prevent further state losses.

North Sumatra Community and Village Empowerment Agency (PMD) head Aspan Sofian denied the allegations, saying they were not ghost villages but had been abandoned by inhabitants due to natural disasters and limited infrastructure.

“There is no ghost village in North Sumatra, only abandoned ones,” Aspan said.

He added that there were 5,417 villages in North Sumatra that had registration numbers from the Home Ministry.

He said that, even though the villages were abandoned, they would still receive village funds from the government.

“As long as the village administration exists, the funds are given,” said Aspan, adding that this year the provincial administration had allocated some Rp 4.5 trillion of village funds to be distributed to 5,417 villages.

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